Gozo: State delisted Abbazia property on Church’s request ‘no questions asked’

The vast swathes of Gozo land claimed by a 17th century foundation for nobility, had been passed on to the Joint Office – a government department that manages Church property granted to the State under the terms of the 1993 concordat – but then delisted at the Church’s request.

The delisting of the lands took place after the Church decided in 2017 that the foundation created by the noblewoman Cosmana Navarra – previously administered by a cleric appointed by the Archbishop – could be ceded from and into the hands of the pretenders to the foundation: the Stagno Navarra family and business partners Dennis Montebello and Carmelo Galea, who together form the company Carravan.

The Maltese Catholic Church today insists these lands were never its property, and that a 2010 court decree – one of many concerning the contested lands in Qala and Nadur – had stated the foundation was ‘lay’ and not ‘ecclesiastical’, and therefore intended to be controlled by Cosmana Navarra’s descendants.

This claim alone, brought in 1992 by the late Richard Stagno Navarra, has never been verified. Lawyers representing Gozitan homeowners are calling for an independent verification of the Stagno Navarras’ claims of lineage.

But court testimony in this case also reveals that the Church’s request to delist the lands from the Joint Office, took place without independent verification as well.

According to the court testimony of Duncan Mifsud, the director of the Joint Office, no verification of the Church’s request to delist the foundation’s Gozo lands from the so-called Annex 8 list of church property, was every carried out.

Mifsud was testifying in the case brought by lawyer Patrick Valentino against homeowner Josephine Cauchi. Valentino is the representative of Carravan, the company leasing out the lands of the foundation Abbazia di Sant Antonio delli Navarra, for development. Valentino was appointed ‘rector’ of the Abbazia, appointed by Archbishop Charles Scicluna in 2017 in agreement with Carravan for the sum of €200,000. The money is a capital investment whose annual interest payments are used for the Church’s pious obligations towards the soul of Cosmana Navarra, as requested in her Abbazia deed.

“We did not carry out any evaluation of the documentation,” Mifsud told the court when asked how the Joint Office’s control committee agreed to delist the Abbazia from Annex 8.

“The list of properties in Annex 8 is the lands which the Church tentatively owned on the day of the concordat. Every single entry has had to be examined by the Joint Office, to verify what title of ownership the Church. Some were deleted... others were corrected, others that were not included in that list were later added... the concordat allowed the State to take all Church lands not required for a pastoral purpose.”

But Mifsud said that the request for the Abbazia’s deletion from Annex 8 came from the Church’s representatives on the Joint Office’s control committee, which is composed of two representatives of the government and two representatives of the Holy See.

“No verification or cross-checks happened... it does not happen, because the agreemnet is clear that the government must accept any properties passed on to it from the Church, and what the Church keeps, it keeps.

“So no researches are carried out... the government got only the lands that the Church had in full ownership... those like this one under administration did not pass on.”

Mifsud said the government cannot refuse a title or “even question” a title passed on to its from the Catholic Church. “What gets passed on to the State must be accepted, without any analysis to be made... when the Church told us this land was under adminstration, they took it back.”

Mifsud confirmed, in a reply to the defendants’ lawyer, that no investigation takes place as to the Church’s claims when land like this is not under full title ownership, but only under alleged administration.

“You do not investigate if effectively they had administration of the properties,” lawyer Jean Paul Grech asked. “No,” Mifsud answered.

“You rest on their word...” he asked again.

“Exactly, that’s the agreement, that’s the spirit of the agreement, it’s clear.”

“Because this process would take place by the control committee, which sees the documents and decided if it was under administration,” the lawyer said.

“That’s it,” Mifsud replied. “My work is to effect the process to see whether any payments are due. I sanction the process.”